


Moriquendi: The Gendered Other in Tolkien Fanfiction

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Critical Essay, Other - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 20:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3782536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why are the Moriquendi elves often scapegoats  in fandom?  A look at how common fanon interpretations of Celeborn, Thranduil, and Legolas reflect colonial discourse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moriquendi: The Gendered Other in Tolkien Fanfiction

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

As the language of desire, the mode through which the forbidden may be indulged(1 ) fantasy often betrays the ever-present, ever-pervasive desire of Western culture for the presence of the feminized Other. (2) In particular, fantasy fanfiction, as a product of popular culture, allows consumers of a particular text or canon to become participants in these narratives; to express and indulge in their desired interpretations of these texts. These desired interpretations inevitably reflect that of the dominant culture, for as Rosemary Jackson states “ _telling_ implies using the language of the dominant order and so accepting its norms.”(3) Within the body of fanfiction in Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings,_ constructions of an enlightened, transcendent and by association, _masculine_ culture, and an inferior, subordinate, by association _feminine_ culture, are brought into play. Not necessarily between the races of Tolkien’s work—the elves, the dwarves, the humans, the hobbits, or even the orcs— but intriguingly enough, within the meta-culture of a race itself: specifically, between the two main culture divisions of the elves, the Light Elves, or _Calaquendi,_ and the Dark Elves, the _Moriquendi;_ these terms already inviting all the connotations of a civilized culture in conflict with an inferior, dangerous Other that must be contained. 

Before we begin, however, it must be stressed that this essay in no way a reflection of the worth of either the _Moriquendi_ or _Laiquendi_ cultures. Neither is this intended to be an attack on specific authors or stories. Rather, it is an examination of the gendered colonial discourses that we, regardless of intent or purposes, have subconsciously applied to Tolkien’s world through our own engagements with the canon. Though some would argue that Tolkien’s canon subscribes to these racial hierarchies, I would argue that Tolkien and his world displays a complex understanding of how culture informs perspective: that contrary to binary logic of Western discourse, _difference_ does not equate with baseness or inferiority. An understanding which some fan fictions seem to lack, regardless of their authors’ intents. Within the body of Tolkien fanfiction, it is most often the _Calaquendi_ that receives sanction as “Self,” an allegory for the enlightened West, and the _Moriquendi_ all associations and attitudes regarding the “Other:” “the ‘Female,’ _difference_ … ‘the gross distortion of Self’” (4) 

Though such sentiments are considered unpolitic when blatantly used in relation to real-life ethnic groups, they may be safely applied to imaginary cultures: they do not exist, they cannot actually express offence or offer resistance. They may then be exoticized: “render[ed] strange even as [they are] domesticated,” (5) constructed according to the imperialist desires or needs of the fan fiction participant. The Moriquendi are then constructed according to a number of narrative strategies surrounding the feminized Other: if the Other aligns itself in any way with the sanctioned culture, it is, as it should be, acknowledging the sanctioned culture’s superiority and its own inferior state, and may receive sanction as the obedient feminine; if the Other transgresses, then it is the hysterical feminine; and if it suits the needs of the reader to objectify and exoticize the feminized Other, then it must be somehow aligned with the sanctioned culture, in order to justify making it the site of desire. These narrative strategies are often applied respectively to the characters of Celeborn Lord of Lothlorien, Thranduil, the King of Mirkwood, and his son Legolas, all characters whose descent is traced along the _Moriquendi_ line. 

In order to understand these binary oppositions of Self and Other as they are articulated in Tolkien fanfiction, it is necessary to understand the history of the Elves. At first a cohesive group, though divided into the three clans of the Vanyar, the Noldor, and the Teleri, the elves were separated when the Valar, god-like beings, came to Middle-Earth. Enamored of the elves, and fearing for their safety “amid the deceits of the starlit dusk,”(6) the Valar then extended an invitation to them to live in bliss and perpetual light in the land of Valinor. Some, afterwards called “the Avari, or Unwilling,” refused outright and chose to remain, the others chose to follow. However, along the journey, more and more of the elves, mostly from the Teleri clan who were “the least eager to depart,” chose to remain in Middle-Earth, forming new clans and cultural groups. Finally, when Elwë Singollo, one of the two Teleri kings disappeared, many of the Teleri host refused to abandon him, and his brother Olwë led the others to Valinor. The Teleri who remained for Elwë’s sake would later, with their king’s return, form the kingdom of Doriath and would be called the Eluwaith. Or, by their Noldor brethren, the Sindar: the _Moriquendi_ culture which is most often placed in opposition to the Noldor in both canon and fan culture. The division was then set in place: the elves who followed the Valar to Valinor were called _Calaquendi,_ for they “experienced the Light of Valinor, and had also far greater knowledge and powers by their association with the Valar and Maia.” Those who remained behind in Middle-Earth, then in perpetual darkness, and troubled by evil and strife, were termed _Moriquendi_ by their sundered brethren. 

Many fans seem content to accept the construction of the _Calquendi_ as a superior, enlightened culture in relation to their _Moriquendi_ kin: “There does seem to be a connection between the _Moriquendi_ and a less noble construct…,” a fan commented on the Tolkien newsgroup, “the _Moriquendi_ can be downright treacherous at times.” (10) Tolkien himself, however, asserts in some of his own writings that this binary opposition was constructed by the _Calaquendi_ themselves, particularly the Noldor clan, and that these constructs were considered offensive by the _Moriquendi._ (11) All the more so, for while the Noldor was the clan associated with knowledge and wisdom, having “showed the greatest talent for intellectual pursuits,”(12) they were also responsible for the Kin Slayings: considered the greatest evil by their own kind. In Valinor, they first committed genocide against their Teleri kindred when they rebelled against the Valar and returned to Middle-Earth, intent on establishing their own bastions of power, and themselves as “the Lords of unsullied Light, and masters of the bliss and beauty of Arda.” (13) Once in Middle-Earth, they would be responsible for the destruction of two more kingdoms: the Sindarin kingdom of Doriath, and Sirion, some of whose inhabitants were comprised of Doriath’s survivors. 

As Sindarin elves, Celeborn, Thranduil, and Legolas are popular victims of these narratives. They are characters who exist outside the sanctioned culture of the Noldor, whose inheritance, and history of grievance present a potential threat to the ideological discourses surrounding Noldor culture. It is the _Calaquendi_ Noldor who are identified as Self, _their_ imperialist narratives which are internalized in fan culture, and consequently, it becomes all the more necessary to render the Sindar as abject and subordinate to the Noldor; that _they_ acknowledge the Noldor’s superiority over them as “natural,” consolidating the authority of the Noldor as a sanctioned culture.(14) The _Moriquendi_ are then constructed as “lesser,” rendered as inferior or subordinate in a variety of strategies similar to that of imperialist narratives, and stories detailing interactions between the Noldor and Sindar often use language disturbingly akin to colonial discourse: the _Morquendi_ feminized as colonial objects, often portrayed as passively adoring of the Noldor, and objects that may be safely patronized, mocked, ignored, or sexualized as the exotic and submissive Other. 

A noble of Doriath and kinsman of Elwë and Olwë, Celeborn is a favorite instrument of such narratives of submission. Married to Lady Galadriel, a princess of the Noldor, he is often positioned as the submissive Other, bereft of the “prerogatives belonging to [dominant] males politically, socially…content to accept” his feminized status.(15) Venerated as Galadriel is, in canon and fan culture, _her_ choice of marriage to an inferior male Other is rarely made a site of contention: instead, it is _Celeborn_ who becomes a passive, complicit object in the Noldorin narratives of dominance over the Sindar. Many stories render Celeborn as an utterly ineffectual, emasculated character, while his wife is the adored center of _masculine_ authority. His accepting acknowledgement of his “lesser” state, and, in one story, the subsequent abandonment of his authority as Lord of Lothlorien are constructed as virtuous by the author. His identification as Sindar is not mentioned, nor is it explicitly used in the text as a justification for this portrayal, yet this in itself suggests internalization of the narratives of masculine/feminine, light/dark dichotomies applied to the Noldor and Sindar. Other fanfictions, though less demeaning, position Celeborn in the role of abject Other, who must either learn from the “wisdom” of the Noldor, or the passive innocent in relation to their (masculine) power. Occasionally, Celeborn becomes an exotic Other, and a site of desire for the Noldor, but he is _always_ submissive, and ever subject to the Noldor’s desires. 

Celeborn, however, occasionally enjoys a more “masculine” portrayal in relation to Thranduil: that is, when both characters share the same narrative space, he is “generously” assigned characteristics usually reserved for the Noldor. He becomes a model of rationality, enlightenment, while Thranduil is positioned as the feminine hysteric. He is the transgressive Other, infected with negative aspects of femininity: debauchery, emotional excess, suffocating over-protectiveness of his offspring: he is femininity gone amok. This abject portrayal of Thranduil partly stems from the description of him and his people in The Hobbit: describing Thranduil and his people as “more dangerous and less wise” (16) than their Calaquendi brethren, and Thranduil as possessing an unflattering love for gems. More profoundly, however, Thranduil is established in canon as having rejected utterly the influence of the Noldor. In the aftermath of the kinslayings, he and his father Oropher left to establish the independent kingdom of Greenwood, “for they had no desire […] to be merged with the other Sindar of Beleriand dominated by the Noldorin Exiles, for whom the folk of Doriath had no great love.” (17) This rejection alone problematizes the favored narratives of the submissive Other, but Greenwood is comprised of the Silvan folk, descendants of the Teleri elves who broke off from the journey to Valinor. Consequently, Thranduil and Oropher reject the “civilizing” influence of the Noldor for a primitive Other, a “rude and rustic” folk; not even attempting to exert a “civilizing” influence on the Silvan, but instead, _deliberately_ “merg[ing] with the Silvan Elves, adopting their language and taking names of Sindarin form and style.” (18) In addition, Thranduil complicates the racial binary between _Calaquendi_ and _Moriquendi_ by possessing physical characteristics of the former. His “golden hair” (19) is a trait primarily associated with the Vanyar, the elves most strongly associated with transcendence and spirituality, and it is a trait adored by the Noldor elves “who loved gold.” (20) In addition to threatening the fantasy of the submissive Other, Thranduil challenges biological difference as a premise for superiority over the feminine and racial Other. (21) 

To the colonialist mindset, Thranduil’s transgressions render him far more abject than his submissive counterparts: it is, after all, the duty of the feminized Other to please their paternal protector. (22) In his outright refusal to do so, he becomes the hysteric, the feminized colonial subject _who does not know his place._ It becomes all the more urgent—and convenient—to construct his “failed” attempts to elevate himself as merely leaving him “totally unredeemed and unregenerated […] depriv[ing] him of the links with his own people whom he no longer understood and who certainly wanted none of his dissatisfaction or pretensions.” (23) Thranduil becomes a weak, effeminate male, prone to weaknesses of all kinds: drunkenness, for instance; what might be regarded as a feminine preoccupation with extravagance and ornamentation; and emotional excess. This incorporation of the feminine within Thranduil is used by fanfiction authors as proof of his weakness and ignobility, a “symptom of disease.” (24) Consequently, he is unable to truly cope with the masculine task of ruling his people, (25) and his feminine weaknesses mean he needs to be controlled and contained by his more rational, elevated brethren: whether they be Noldor, or Noldor-aligned _Moriquendi._

Thranduil’s emotional excesses, particularly with regard to his children, may be used as a site of sympathy: procreation, after all, is the sole creative task which may be sanctioned in the feminized Other. But this site of sympathy is also used to strengthen the construction of Thranduil as the feminized male Other: base in his possession of a “monstrous maternity.” (26) With regard to Legolas, his only established child, this in its stead becomes useful in constructing Legolas as a valid site of desire, distancing him from his father, and by association, his father’s transgressions and _Moriquendi_. heritage. Courtesy of his portrayal by Orlando Bloom in the _Lord of the Rings_ films, Legolas is usually favored, however dubiously, with what is _meant_ to be a more flattering portrayal. Like Celeborn, he becomes the virtuous feminine Other who seeks to align himself with the enlightenment of the Noldor. Often, in stories featuring Legolas’ coming-of-age, Thranduil is portrayed as a suffocating maternal influence, completely obsessed with his child, as if it is his child who validates his existence. Legolas’ coming of age involves breaking away from this constraining maternal embrace and embracing the paternal association of the rational, enlightened Noldor. (27) Even if some writers generously allow for a reconciliation to be achieved between maternal father and child, it is the paternal _Noldor,_ who generously serve as the voice of rationality, who _allow_ this reconciliation to take place. Legolas’ emotional independence from his overly-maternal _Moriquendi_ parent is then constructed as a step towards _Caliqeundi_ rationality and enlightenment. 

Legolas’ constructed _Caliquendi_ leanings then validates him as a worthy recipient of desire, an aesthetic object available for the author’s use. He is feminized in this objectification, but is “masculine” enough to be valued above his maternal father. He becomes a frail, angelic beauty who may always placed in harm’s way, or under threat of death, needing to be rescued by more masculine Noldor-affiliated characters. Some fictions go one step further, and “kill” Legolas (though usually finding ways to bring him back), allowing him to be further objectified as the “emblematic beautiful woman,” the ultimate aesthetic object (28) as kith and kin go into a near orgasmic ecstasy of mourning. 

These representations of the _Moriquendi_ reflect our prevailing need for the existence of the inferior Other: the Other who aids in the construction of our own superiority and goodness by the very baseness of their nature. But these representations, thankfully, are being challenged. Other fanfiction writers have constructed a language of resistance: attacking the imperial attitudes towards gender and race in these neo-colonial narratives, speaking on behalf of the fictional Other who cannot. Some have written the encounters between the Sindar and Noldor from the _Moriquendi_ perspective, demystifying the Noldor as beautiful, enlightened folk, critiquing their imperialist arrogance, and even making them objects of passing humor to the Sindar. They have also critiqued the existing feminized representations of Sindarin characters through their own representations of the character, and assert the identification of _Sindar_ as one utterly autonomous from the Noldor. Celeborn becomes not a submissive Other, but a wise, active participant in historical and political events, one associated with a deep abiding love for the world in which the _Moriqeundi_ chose to remain. Thranduil is revealed, as he is in canon, as fully self-determined ruler, with knowledge and wisdom separate from that of the Noldor. Legolas is no longer a child who seeks to break free from an “oppressive” _Moriquendi_ heritage, but one in harmony with it, and his father. The conflicts between Noldor and Sindar are then turned, not into narratives of an enlightened culture exerting itself over an inferior one, but examinations of cultural and critiques of cultural arrogance and suppression. And hopefully, a means of invoking empathy for the racial Other who we are often taught to disregard. **Bibliography:** (1) Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy, the Literature of Subversion. (Methuen: London, 1981) 3. (2)Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Vintage Books, 1979) 2. (3) Jackson, Fantasy, 4. (emphasis mine) (4) Dorothy M. Figueira, The Exotic: A Decadent Quest, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 2. (5) Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, (London: Routledge, 2001), 13. (6) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 49. (7)J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, (London: HarperCollins, 1999), 49. (8) J.R.R. Tolkien, War of the Jewels, vol. 11 of History of Middle Earth, (London: Harper Collins, 2002), 382. (9) ibid., 373. (10) delcollo joseph, “Elves of the East,” 23 February 1993, alt. fan.tolkien, available from date accessed, 30 August 2004. Another thread where some participants express similar sentiments can be found at: topic began May 30, 2004, by Curufinwe of the Noldor, date accessed, [15 August 2004]. (11) Tolkien, The War of the Jewels , 373 (12) ibid., 383. (13) Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 88. (14) “Introduction,” “Part II: Universality and Difference,” The Post Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffeth and Helen Tiffin (London: Routledge, 1995), 55. (15) Donald Gibson, “Chapter One of Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery and the Feminization of the African American Male, Representing Black Men, ed. Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham, (London: Routledge, 1996), 96. (16) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, (London: Umyn Hyman, 1987), 144. (17) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Unfinished Tales, ed. Christopher Tolkien, (London: Harper Collins, 1998), 336. (18) ibid., 336. (19) Tolkien, The Hobbit, 134. (20) Tolkien, The War of the Jewels, 382. (21) James P. Sterba, “Racism and Sexism: The Common Ground,” Race and Sex: Their Samness, Difference, and Interplay, ed. Naomi Zack, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 62. (22) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1984. 24. (23) Chinua Achebe, “Colonialist Criticism,” The Postcolonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et. al (London: Routledge, 1995), 58-59. (24) Elaine Showalter, “Hysteria, Feminism and Gender,” Hysteria Beyond Freud, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 289. (25) ibid., 289. (26) Stephen Scobie, “What’s the Story, Mother? The Mourning of the Alien,” Science Fiction Studies, (March 1993): 82. (27) Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. ed. Leon S. Roudiez, translated by Thomas Gora et. al, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,1980) 245. Note: These are Kristeva’s words as applied to the relationship between Thranduil and Legolas, as maternal father and child, and the Noldor as the rational father. (28) Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 25. 


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